What comic are you reading at the moment.

Some more reading for me, all digital since I've got a bunch of comics on my tablet.

Once & Future, volume 1 - This was fun! The artwork suited it really well, too! The story was good, dialogue was good fun (pretty much a given with Gillen) and it was a refreshing breather from Gillen's other current work, Die - which is great, but much heavier and moodier.

Moonshine, volume 1 - I really like Eduardo Risso's art, and he pairs very well with Azzarello. I've cooled on Azzarello somewhat in recent years, but this sort of thing suits both their strengths very well. I can't believe it's taken me this long to get around to it.

Haha #2 & 3 - More idiosynchratic horror, and much like Ice Cream Man & the first issue of Haha, it's great - in that way that properly good horror is, where it's compelling and odd and funny but also off-kilter, creepy and worms its way into your thoughts with nagging little moments that won't leave you alone. #3 in particular is a delight because the comics industry, for some bloody awful reason, has not granted enough recognition to Roger Langridge, whose cartooning and physical acting is phenomenal and which makes him the perfect fit for this funny, weird, sad story about a lonely mime.

Rain Like Hammers #1 - I really like Graham's comics. There's something about the variety of his interests and references, the goofy humour he peppers throughout his pages, and the imaginative aspect of his stories that really works for me. This feels very contemplative and measured, in a way that's an interesting change for him - all of the elements that I like about his other comics are here, but the narrative focus is more on being, rather than doing, so to speak. It's about lots of little moments that are kind of trivial, rather than Big Plot Stuff. It took me a few pages to realise that, and after doing so I enjoyed it as a nice sedate read.

I also read Saphari by Miguel Angel Martín recently, a physical copy, having seen it on a number of "best of 2020 comics" lists in Spain. I'm not really sure what to make of it, and I'm not really sure why it got such praise. The art is good, but not astonishing - it works well for the story and rhythm, but there weren't any sequences or panels that really stood out as being exceptional art or would make you linger over them. Narratively, it is nominally a thriller - but a lot of moments, described by some reviewers as social commentary, really felt like edgy teenager "cleverness". I'm fine with stories in which every character is an arsehole, but I need to have something to engage me, and I didn't feel there was anything engaging here. I may go back to this again in a while, though, to see if I've missed something first time around.

Oh, I forgot to mention Ice Cream Man vols 4 & 5. I really like these comics, they have a really strong vein of character- focused done-in-one horror that is unlike anything else on the market and, for me, they show what sorts of things comics as a medium can do really well. My only qualm was issue #17 in volume 5, which is a Superman riff (specifically commenting on All-Star Superman) - while it was well done as a homage/riff, it felt like it was falling into that really tedious type of insularity far too many Direct Market superhero comics have, which is weird for a series that has otherwise set itself an extremely broad scope. Still, one slight mis-step amongst 19 excellent issues is nothing much to gripe about.

A couple more bits chosen at random from my digital comics backlog:

Shadowman #1 - this is from the Valiant relaunch a while ago. I dimly recall hearing of Shadowman in the 90s because of the game, but hadn't ever seen the comic. Frankly, this issue did nothing to change that - the first page has some shockingly bad inner monologue, and it doesn't manage to get much better than "rote". Definitely not something I'd read more of, much less spend any money on.

Bloom County Digital Collection, Volume 1

I want to like this as the art style works for me and the tone of the dialogue generally makes me laugh. I'm hoping it becomes more confident in itself and less dependent on now-extremely-dated pop-culture references. I'll give it at least another couple of volumes to find its footing, though.

Ah, good to know. I've read good things about it, but in particular I think Watterson's willingness to do joke crossover strips with Breathed in the last few years seals the deal - Calvin & Hobbes is my all time favourite comic strip so if its infamously retiring creator is willing to collaborate with someone, that someone's work must also be pretty good

I finished reading the first Hack/Slash Omnibus today. I'm not really sure what to make of it - on the one hand, it's enjoyable enough as a riff on horror film conventions, and is pretty funny at times. On the other hand, the omnibus format isn't great for this material - given that it's a fairly pop-culture sort of story, having 300-odd pages in one collection just feels like an opportunity for the general gimmick to wear a bit thin. I'm not generally a fan of cheesecake in my narrative comics, and that seemed to become more pronounced as the story went on. It's not a huge problem, and I do get that it fits with the overall theme of slasher films, but still - not really my thing. Will have to see if I feel like returning to this. Although Omnibus 2 is a collection of the ongoing series rather than a collection of one shots and minis, so maybe an overall narrative throughline will help hold my interest...

Plastic - this is an image mini from a little while ago. I enjoyed this quite a lot - I wasn't sure what to expect from it at first, but "gory black comedy" probably covers it best. The humour and violence are well balanced so that neither aspect ever overpowers the other, so while the violence is frequently played for laughs we never entirely lose sight of how brutal it is. Definitely an enjoyable read, and I'd read more from the creative team in future.

Beyond Palomar - I'm making my way slowly through this. It's quite interesting, but the shift in focus to Luba's early days and a necessary widening of focus to an organised-crime power-play narrative isn't really holding my interest any more than it did first time around. There's nothing wrong with it exactly, but the supporting characters aren't interesting enough to make up for the fact that we can't really see much development of Luba's character (although we do get a bit).

Ignited #1-4 - I didn't realise that Humanoids had set up a shared-universe superhero imprint called H1 a few years back. Ordinarily I probably wouldn't care, but it's Carla Speed McNeil's involvement that interests me as I really like her work on Finder. This is a teen superhero group origin story, done reasonably well and with an interesting angle in that the event that sparks the protagonists to develop powers is a mass shooting event at their high school. I don't know if I'd necessarily seek out more of it, but these 4 issues do a good job of establishing characters and scenario.

Omni #1 - Another H1 story, this is probably my favourite of the bunch as the protagonist's abilities amount to super-intelligence but depicted and used in a much more interesting way than the Tony Stark/Reed Richards type way that superhero titles often go for. I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

Strangelands #1 - Another H1 story, this is definitely the weakest of the bunch for me. The art is weak, the story tries to do an in medias res thing that reeks of not having confidence in the actual story so throwing a half-baked action sequence in at the start, and the characters aren't interesting. For me, this kind of odd-couple story lives or dies on whether the dynamic between the protagonists is entertaining to watch - when it's done well you'll get sparkling dialogue and enjoy the bickering as much as the action. None of that happens here. I have digital copies of issues 2-4 but I doubt I'll bother with them on the strength of this.

On a whim I picked up Volume 3 of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl recently and really enjoyed it, far more than I might have guessed. The writing and art are great, and I really like the way SG tackles problems and tries to understand her antagonists and find alternative ways to end the conflict rather than just rely on punching. So I'll be reading more of this, I think.

I also ordered a bunch of comics, including the last 2 volumes of RASL (I read the first half of the series years ago when the Pocketbook collection came out, but never did see a second volume to finish the story), another SG trade, the first volume of Gotham Academy, and a few small press bits that caught my eye.

Black Monday Murders is great, but appears to be suffering from Hickman Syndrome in that it's 2/3 of the way through with no indication of when the last 1/3 might start being published...